Opinion: Blame Obama for All the Airport Delays

Assistant editorial page editor James Freeman on how President Obama could have prevented flight delays. Photo credit: Associated Press.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... good afternoon and welcome to Opinion Journal why Mary Kissel ... just when you thought flying in America could not get more knowing ... the Federal Aviation ministry mission this week ... decided to furlough air traffic controllers ... just to score some political points ... assistant editorial page editor James Freeman is here to discuss ... James C FAA is blaming it on the sequester ... was this the only option for the FAA know now and this is what you really have to wonder is is the point here just to infuriate passengers so that the law finally in these aspiration ... agree to higher taxes and more government spending to ... the FAA is basically chosen to love ... to make these cuts is painful is they can be iam bitter of the ... Fruhlinger traffic controllers Monday out of every ten days now ... the math means they're cutting their workforce by about ten percent in the towers how you end up with forty percent delays as a result of that it does make you wonder if you're ever present rate in the fireball almost all of the air traffic controllers in nineteen eighty one ... and in fairly short order flights were operating at something like eighty percent to ... of their own of their previous schedule so ... this this guy really doesn't have to be that way there are other options to get me the mind boggles chains because in the private sector ... if you had a reduced budget ... the thing you would least want to do was upset your customers like this government ... works the APUs it when yes I mean very far sighted there and so in that business to ride the margin of ... what he did what flexibility the president has picked up one at the top shows on the deal that I is ... is that there are there he's basically ignoring all of these of congressional efforts on a jury Miranda roadblock in the Senate ... saying ... well we did you more flexibility so you know that the two of them in there forever controller so you don't have to delay flights so far he's not interested that ... is basically ... there's a determination that these cuts will happen now with this particular point that though that causes a lot of annoyance to travel so the political strategy is to get people so angry that they want to raise their own taxable ... what is the eye to what other conclusion there can be you look at the the part of the FAA working on the Obama administration says were allowed to cut ... one in this program includes air traffic control whether there's a lot of staff there are people that don't draft and died in the airplanes ... and their being furloughed anymore than the people who actually are directing the airplane so ... I think ... there's more they spend five hundred million euro consultants ... every dollar that is necessary to three hundred million a year plus on supplies and travel ... again I mean is it possible that that's all necessary spending when your when you get people sitting waiting for flights to the fun ... things ... while in the present has tried very hard to scare us all into believing that the sequester ... which run our economy off a cliff right um what's the evidence so far to see that it's of ... for the first five weeks basically ... all of the the scare warnings were proven wrong so ... now we're two and this is why when you have no wonder they the ... idea of painting himself into this corner where he's ... he's so warning about these awful consequences ... and now we have this perverse incentive were since they didn't happen ... there's almost a political necessity her tended ... to show that no he doesn't fall over there really is a problem here and and that's why it's so disturbing when you look at the FAA in using these options that they have that they're not using while James an almost implies that he's trying to push the economy ... into a bad place well to help his political prospects for twenty fourteen year I'm being too cynical well I think is certainly you look at the the paintings causing air travelers right now ... you see how it could be avoided how there are other ways to cut budget there are other people but for all other people you could perhaps the good life often that SAC religion government ever considered that ... but but ... but but he did it does seem designed to blunt maximum pain on that bed traveler and I and motivate them to call Congress and say go ahead given this penny warrants raise my taxes I don't care to get to ... Los Angeles or weren't there or wherever they need to go ... but when it's to fly or really any business people ... but who cares about those